A datacenter is where application software and customer data running on the software are located. Vendors of cloud-based IT services must maintain transparency of where they replicate customer data at any given time for protection against failure or local disaster. If a datacenter ceases functioning for any reason, customer data will not be lost if the application software and customer data running on that application software are also available from a second or possibly third datacenter. And assuming it works smoothly enough, customers might not even be notified when such a failover occurs. Depending on the particular service, failover may not result in any service interruption at all.
Global enterprises have leveraged the Internet and cloud-based computing services, along with datacenters, to establish private communication networks and capture efficiencies from global technology. As a result of such globalization, in recent years, many nations have issued geographic location rules restricting how corporations can handle and transmit their customers' data across borders, including through these private networks. Certain entities require that specific types of data, for example government data, employee data, or telecommunications traffic data be stored within a limited geographical border, and in some cases, such data may even not be accessed from outside of a geographical border.
A geographic location is specified by a set of coordinates representing the latitude, longitude and elevation which are the principal elements of a geographic coordinate system. The latitude (φ, or phi) of a point on the Earth's surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through (or close to) the center of the Earth. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The longitude (λ, or lambda) of a point on the Earth's surface is the angle east or west from a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. The internationally recognized reference Prime Meridian passes through a point in Greenwich, England, and determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres. The elevation of a point on the Earth's surface is typically its height relative to sea level; while altitude is used for points above sea level, such as an aircraft in flight or a spacecraft in orbit, depth is used for points below sea level.
Geographic location of a position on Earth can be obtained from beacons like Wi-Fi access points and cell towers, from the IP address of a device, or it may come from other sources such as a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) or Global Positioning System (GPS) device. The accuracy of geographic location information depends on the source, and may vary from the actual position of a device, computer or resource within the following exemplary ranges:                GPS: within approximately 10 meters        Wi-Fi: between approximately 30 meters and 500 meters        Cell towers: between approximately 300 meters and 3,000 meters        IP address: between approximately 1,000 meters and 5,000 meters        
When dealing with information technology operations, it is common to utilize the attribution of one or more types of claims. A claim is a unique piece of information about a user, device, computer, or resource. These are very often attributes that can be found as properties of a computer object in a domain name services directory—things like a user's functional title, organizational department or office location, are claims that can be defined. So is the business impact classification of a data file, or the health status of a computer. A computer object or entity can involve more than one claim, and any combination of claims can be used to authorize access to resources. The following exemplary types of claims are typically available in a commercially available domain name services directory:                User claims: attributes that are associated with a specific user.        Device claims: attributes that are associated with a specific computer object.        Resource attributes: global resource properties that are marked for use in authorization decisions.        
Claims are generally protected in a domain name services directory which is operated upon and published by a domain controller and its surrogates. This is to prevent them from being tampered with by unauthorized personnel, and accessible only to properly authenticated users, devices and computers. Claims make it possible for administrators to make precise organization- or enterprise-wide statements about users, devices, computers, and resources that can be incorporated in expressions, rules, and policies for IT operations.